


The greater grief

by napoleonborntoparty



Series: philtatos [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Domestic Fluff, Idiots in Love, Insecure Bucky Barnes, M/M, Oblivious Steve Rogers, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Sad Ending, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Wakanda, all i wanted was bucky to be happy, also goats, bucky calls steve honey bc steve is HIS HONEY, in this house we stan shuri and t'challa, lots of touching bc i said so, thanks russos, this fanfic is a MONSTER of FEELINGS, this is basically a love letter to wakanda, this was supposed to be cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-07 19:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14677950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napoleonborntoparty/pseuds/napoleonborntoparty
Summary: The world is quiet now, and he'd give anything to take it all back.For two years, Steve visits Bucky in Wakanda and longs for a life more ordinary. Then a madman snaps his fingers.





	1. In which Steve gets a call and answers it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will fight the russos with my bare hands, i swear to god.

**Now**

  
  
  


“Steve?”

  
  
  


**Eighteen months ago**

It’s been half a year since Siberia.

Steve, Sam and Scott have been squatting in a very shabby one-room apartment in Uruguay, and in four days they will finally rendezvous with Nat, Wanda and Clint for the first time in five months. This is when Steve’s burner phone starts to ring.

Steve emerges from the closet-sized bathroom wiping his face with a towel, stubble half shaved off. He makes a beeline for the backpack laid on the desk. Sam is asleep, but he jack-knifes into an upright position when he hears it. Scott frantically ends an email to his daughter and sends it, then he rips the battery and the motherboard out the back of laptop and chucks the whole thing out the window.

It turns out it's not the phone ringing, but a small black bead, glowing faintly. Steve cups it in his palm.

"Wakanda,” he murmurs, quiet. They’ve had a few calls from Wakanda since escaping the Raft, but they've only spoken to War Dogs who have clearance high enough to know their country is keeping tabs on international fugitives. Sam flops back onto the couch, huffing and pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

“Aw man,” Scott says. “Now I gotta steal another laptop.”

Steve brushes his fingertip over the kimoyo bead. “Hello?”

 _“Steve.”_ The sound of a friendly voice immediately evaporates the spike of tension in the room.

Steve smiles in relief. “Your Majesty.”

It sounds like T'Challa laughs a little. _“Steve, are we not friends? No need for such formalities.”_

“Alright,” Steve says, “How’s it going, buddy?”

This time it's definitely a laugh. _“All things considered, I've known worse times. Are you and yours alright?”_

“Uh,” all three of them say. Steve eyes Scott trying to pet a cockroach that scuttles under the bed. Sam hides his face under a pillow.

_“Allow me to rephrase. Are you safe? Out of harm?”_

“For now, we are that.”

_“I'm pleased to hear it.”_

“Ask him to PayPal me for a new laptop,” Scott whispers.

“Tic-Tac, he's a _king_ ,” Sam groans.

“Exactly!”

“Scott freaked out when you rang and threw his laptop out the window,” Steve says.

_“My apologies, Mr Lang. I will speak to my people, we will have to provide you with something more secure.”_

Scott punches the air.

_“There's a reason I called, Steve.”_

“Is everything alright? We caught the news about Wakanda starting open channels. Is it a mission? Have you heard from Romanoff?”

_“Steve. This is a personal call. About our mutual friend.”_

Scott and Sam both look up at the same time.

 _Bucky?_ Scott mouths.

Steve sits down hard at the desk chair.

“What -” he tries, his tongue suddenly feeling too big for his mouth, then tries again, “Is everything okay?”

_“If I send someone to retrieve you, would you be able to come to Wakanda?”_

_I thought we had more time_ , is the first thing he wants to say and his heart starts to thud in his chest. A million scenarios fill his head all at once, each more terrible than the last. _I thought he'd be safe for longer._

Sam is suddenly at his side, a hand firm on his shoulder.

“What's happened?” is all he can choke out.

 _“Steve,”_ T’Challa’s calmness and his warm accent are like a soothing balm. _“Do not fret. He has asked for you.”_

Steve looks up at Sam, then Scott, who is nodding emphatically. He looks back to Sam, who squeezes his shoulder and says with more compassion than Steve believes he is worthy of these days, “It's okay. You go tonight, stay a few days, you still meet us Friday. The others will understand. Go.”

“T’Challa,” Steve says, not looking away from Sam’s kind face. “We’re good. Please send the jet.”

It arrives in the dead of the night. The jet is so streamline and black and silent that even though it shimmers into view right before Steve's eyes, it's damn near impossible to spot against the dark sky, even once it's landed on the apartment block roof.

Steve shoulders the bag that holds any of his stuff that Sam and Scott wouldn't need to make their way to Mexico. Saying goodbye to them was hard, even though they'll only be apart a few days. They've stuck together, lived together, since the Raft, since they'd agreed to separate from Clint, Nat and Wanda for the safety of them all.

When he boards the jet and it takes off with barely a whisper, a striking woman with a tattooed scalp exits the cockpit to greet him. “You were in a bad way last time we met so I do not expect you to remember me,” she says. “I am -”

“Okoye,” Steve finishes. “T'Challa's General.”

She seems surprised, but pleased. “Most white people mistake me for a bodyguard.” Her lip curls. “Or his girlfriend.”

“I'm good at recognising fellow soldiers,” Steve says, looking for somewhere to stow his bag.

Okoye takes the bag from him, presses a panel on the wall of the jet and throws the bag onto the cot that slides out the wall. She glances at him with a calculating eye. “A soldier. Is that what you are these days?”

She's perceptive, like her king. Steve smiles. “I can see why T'Challa likes you.”

She raises a sharp eyebrow. “Yes. I’m sure he has his reasons for liking you too.”

He raises both hands. “I don't want to cause any trouble.”

Okoye leans toward him. It's not threatening, more like she wishes to share a secret with him. “You say you know a fellow soldier? Well, I know a troublemaker when I see one.”

She moves further down the jet and presses another panel in the wall, from which another bed slides out. With a touch of one of the white beads at her wrist, the overhead lights dim a little. She hops up onto the cot then looks at him still standing there. “The plane is on a charted course, it has no need of a pilot. We have a long flight back to Wakanda. Get some sleep, Steve Rogers. You look like you need it.”

So Steve follows her lead and lays down. He thinks he won't sleep - can't. The idea, or rather the _lack_ of idea, of what awaits him makes his stomach roil with anticipation. But the bed is softer and safer than anything he's slept on in six months, and just as soon as he closes his eyes, Okoye is waking him up with a gentle shake on the shoulder.

“We are here,” she says. “Come.”

He grabs his bag and jumps down. When the side of the jet opens and they descend the stairs onto the landing pad outside the palace, the mid-afternoon sun dazzles him, and the heat envelops him like a blanket.

T’Challa is waiting for them.

When they approach, Okoye’s back goes ramrod straight and she crosses her arms in the Wakandan salute, bowing her head. “My king,” she says.

T’Challa returns the salute. “Okoye.”

They smile warmly at each other, and Steve realises they are friends. (He tries not to think about him much, but he finds that Tony Stark wanders into his thoughts with the most obscure of prompts. Seeing mutual respect and loyalty so palpable between two people makes something ugly twist inside Steve, something like betrayal, or guilt, the same thing that keeps him awake at night when he thinks about how he nearly brought that shield down on Tony’s neck.)

Okoye takes her place at T’Challa’s side, and T’Challa turns his smile to Steve, giving him the salute too. “My friend. I am so glad to see you.”

“You too. Your call – thank you. Really, I – I wasn’t expecting…” Steve is close to rambling, so he decides to stop beating around the bush and ask what he wants to ask. “Bucky. Is he – okay? Can I see him?”

T’Challa’s smile grows wider, which is something of a relief to Steve. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if you couldn’t. He will be here soon.”

“Here…? Isn’t he here in the labs?”

“Bucky has not been a medical resident for a few months now.”

 _“Months?”_ Steve repeats, a well of hurt opening inside him. Bucky had been awake for months, and Steve was only just finding out?

T’Challa touches his shoulder, speaking softly. “Steve. He has not been ready. I would not have kept you apart otherwise.”

“Is he now?” Steve swallows. “Ready?”

“If you mean, have we managed to complete the work he asked of us, then yes. He is. And if you mean in regard to yourself, when he visited us a few days ago, he asked when he would be able to see you. A good diagnosis all round, wouldn’t you say?”

Steve’s body feels light and heavy at the same time. “So – those words, the triggers …”

“Gone. My sister’s work.”

“Shuri?”

T’Challa nods. “She is a little genius, although you mustn’t tell her I said so.”

“And when you say Bucky visited you…?”

“After science did all it could for him, he was given a place just outside one of the villages, with the Border Tribe.”

“Why?” Steve asks. He doesn't like the idea that Bucky might be kept far away because he's erratic or unstable, and even more than that, the idea that he might be lonely.

“The quiet. Sunlight. Fresh air. Nature. All these things heal us, my friend. It was Shuri who took him there after removing those terrible things inside his head. And when given the choice, he chose to remain where he was.” T’Challa squints a little, like he’s figuring Steve out, which Steve reckons he probably is. “I think you are concerned he is isolated. Don't worry. From what I hear, he is quite the catch with my people.” He casts a look back at Okoye, who shrugs one shoulder. Steve thinks she might be trying not to smile, but he can't be sure.

“Buck used to be a catch with everyone.”

T’Challa gestures behind Steve. “Here they come.”

He turns. There’s a transport coming in to land beside the plane he’s just come off, with two passengers. Steve’s heart is in his mouth. Shuri, dressed in a wrap skirt and a crop top, her hair twisted into two buns either side of her head, clambers out the driver’s side. She sticks her tongue out at her brother when he waves to her.

Bucky vaults out over the other side.

He looks nothing like how Steve has been imagining.

The last image Steve has of Bucky, the way he’s been envisioning him in his head – he’s in white sterile scrubs, a little beat up and infinitely weary, ready to go on ice. But here, Bucky is dressed in an orange shuka cloth and sandals, with a set of kimoyo beads on his wrist and a red sling over his empty left shoulder. He doesn’t look jaded or in pain. He’s grinning when Shuri nips round the vehicle to walk with him, to touch his elbow and mutter something that makes his eyes crinkle.

“Hey, Steve!” he calls. Like he’s happy. Like he’s happy to see Steve.

Before Steve can overthink - or worry about awkwardness - or overstepping - or how to behave - Bucky strides up to him and hugs him with his arm around Steve's neck. Suddenly, for a fleeting moment, it’s like the decades are stripped away. Steve has just hobbled out of a hospital ward after three weeks bedbound with pneumonia and Bucky clutches at him and hisses _god damn it Rogers I thought you were gone I thought you weren't gonna make it._

Steve wraps his arms around Bucky and holds him tight and doesn't let go. He breathes in deep to calm his racing heart and Bucky smells like sweat and warm air and something that Steve thinks is a slow-cooked food smell, and it's _good_ , God, it's _so good_ -

T'Challa, Shuri and Okoye have started whispering in Xhosa. Steve doesn't know what they are saying, but he suspects they've had to strike up a conversation for something to do. Eventually, they break apart. And if there's a few damp spots on the shoulder of Bucky's shuka, and if Steve has to blink rapidly a couple of times, everyone is nice enough not to mention it.

“Bucky…” he says, like he can’t believe it.

“Yeah, it's me,” Bucky snaps his fingers next to his temple. “All present and accounted for, thanks to this one.” He points at Shuri, who is beaming.

“I would have done it sooner,” she begins.

“But we had a bit of family trouble,” T’Challa finishes.

“T'Challa -” Steve says, stepping toward him, then looking at his sister, “Princess -” he reaches out a hand, “I don't know what to - I - thank you -”

T’Challa grasps Steve’s outstretched hand in both of his and he's nodding to tell Steve there doesn't need to be any more words, even if he had them.

One of the beads at T’Challa’s wrist trills and a female voice comes forth, “ _T'Challa_ -”

T'Challa quickly says something in Xhosa into the kimoyo bracelet and covers it with his hand. “You'll have to excuse me, gentlemen,” he says. “One of my diplomatic emissaries has just returned -”

“Ha!” Shuri exclaims, jerking a thumb in her brother’s direction and shaking her head at Steve and Bucky. “What he means by that is his girlfriend has come home after two weeks away and he wants to –”

“– I'm sure our friends have much they'd like to discuss without your constant interruptions, sister,” T’Challa says, taking Shuri by the shoulders.

“My constant interruptions are a _blessing_ , brother. Right, Bucky?”

“No comment.”

“Colonisers,” Shuri says with an eyeroll.

T'Challa steers her toward Okoye. “Okoye, please take this sweet child far away from my guests so they cannot hear how rude she is.”

“I'll text you later!” Shuri calls as she and Okoye walk away. Steve thinks he can see Okoye grinning as she places a hand on Shuri's shoulder.

“I'll get someone to take you back to the village, shall I?” T’Challa offers but Bucky shakes his head.

“I love your flying car,” he says, glancing back at the hovering transport with adoring eyes. “I really, really do. But,” Bucky considers Steve, “I think we’ll catch the train like when we were kids. What do you think?”

“Sounds good,” Steve says and his heart soars.

  


“So…” Steve says quietly once they're on the train. They gain a little scrutiny at first, but the train is large and spacious and once they find seats on their own and keep to themselves, none of the other passengers so much as spare them another glance. Steve figures public transport is the same the world over. They bend their heads together, although Steve imagines the Wakandans care little for the conversation of two white men, even if they do happen to recognise either of them. “…you're okay? Really okay?”

“Yeah, I'm good,” Bucky says, nodding forcefully. “Better now you're here.”

“Shut up,” Steve says, unable to fight off a bashful smile. He fiddles with a translation device T’Challa had gifted him before they left the palace. It's meant to go in his ear but he hasn't fitted it yet. “I can't… I just -”

“Can’t believe it?” Bucky asks. “Neither could I. Thought I'd be under for years. But you hadn't been gone more than a couple weeks when they woke me up. I get out the tank and Shuri is just standing there in a t-shirt and denim shorts for Christ’s sake. And she says, ‘Hello again, Sergeant Barnes, I’m Shuri if you don't remember. Get up on this table and I'll fix your brain.’”

“And she did,” Steve says.

Bucky looks at him with a kind of reverence in his eyes. “It took her _forty minutes_ to remove the triggers, Steve. That's all."

"Did it hurt?"

"Yeah. Like, a lot. But you know what she said after? 'Sorry it took so long.'” Bucky laughs very quietly to himself. But he _laughs_ , and it's like golden light pouring out of the sun. “All the work those bastards put in, undone in less than an hour by a little girl.”

At the city's edge, they alight the train and walk the rest of the way, for about an hour or so, the shine of the buildings giving way to the verdant countryside.

“What have you been doing since, then?”

“Therapy,” Bucky says without a hint of irony. “ _So much_ therapy. Hiking. Yoga.” He looks back at the rolling hills that surround the city, and the flattening plains before them. “And now I guess I’m a farmer.”

The contented look on his face makes Steve feel like an ever-present knot he doesn’t even notice anymore just dissolved from his chest.

“And here I always thought you were a city boy,” he muses.

Bucky tilts his head. “I've been a couple of things. What about you? Still on the lam?”

“Yep. Trying to keep under the radar, mostly. There's rumours of a couple of terrorist cells who still have some Chituari tech from New York, so…” He shrugs. “I should probably deal with that.”

“Of course,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “And here's me, willing to give my left arm for a quiet life. Oh, wait.” He grins and shifts his body as if to show off the empty sleeve of his t-shirt.

Steve is momentarily speechless.

“What, Steve?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow. “Didn't I have a sense of humour in the thirties?”

“Yeah, you did,” Steve manages.

They crest a slope that leads down to a shimmering river and a _banda_ hut. The jungle stretches out on either side of the river, and on the bank, the grass stretches out toward a road, and more _banda_ s form a village a little way in the distance. Steve can see cattle and goats milling around. “Brace yourself,” Bucky says, raising his hand. “Here comes the cavalry.”

Steve notices the larger herd of goats being led up the road toward the grass by a gaggle of children, who start yelling and running when they see Bucky. Steve sticks the earpiece in. When they reach the bottom of the slope, the children have formed a little crowd around Bucky, and he goes down to one knee so they can throw their arms around him. When Steve steps closer they all grow still and gaze up at him with big eyes.

“Hello,” he says, very self-conscious.

One of the little kids approaches, tipping his head right back to look him in the face and then he says, “Steve?” All the kids seem to catch on and suddenly it's a cacophony of little voices yelling “Steve! Steve! Steve!”

Steve looks at Bucky in shock. Bucky looks sheepish.

“You told them about me?”

Bucky scratches his stubble with his one hand. The boy who identified Steve starts climbing Bucky's leg and he scoops him up easily with one arm, balancing him on his hip. The boy immediately starts playing with Bucky's hair. “‘Course I told them about you. But they may just be talking about the goat.”

“The _goat?_ ” Steve asks, nonplussed.

“The goat Steve,” Bucky says and grins wide when all the kids start up their chorus of “Steve! Steve!” again.

“ _Issa, where's little Steve?_ ” Bucky says to the boy combing his fingers through his hair. The words sound strange for a moment before Steve remembers the translator, and realises Bucky is speaking Xhosa.

“ _With the herd,_ ” Issa says, pointing. “ _I’ll get him._ ”

Bucky sets him down. Issa and his friends run off.

Steve stares at Bucky. “Little Steve?”

Bucky is unapologetically beaming. “His mama died giving birth to him about a month ago. He's the runt of the herd so I named him after you.”

“Wow, thanks, pal.”

The children return at full speed, and Issa is holding a kid across his shoulders that is complaining in loud warbling cries. “Steve!” He chimes.

“ _Hey, Stevie_ ,” Bucky says in a voice that's so indulgent that it makes Steve's knees go a little weak. He reaches for the baby goat and it seems overjoyed to see him, bleating and wriggling happily in his grasp. “Steve,” he says and looks at Steve, proffering the goat. “Meet Steve.”

The goat’s little face is sweet, and he is clearly small and fragile for his age. Steve reaches out one finger to stroke him and the goat snaps at him with his teeth.

“Whoa,” Steve says and draws back.

Bucky laughs. “He's a scrapper just like you.” He plops the goat on the ground and nudges him with his foot. “ _Off you go now_ ,” he says. The goat bucks once or twice playfully then takes off at a wobbly sprint.

“Cute,” Steve says.

“ _He says he's cute,_ ” Bucky informs the children and they all giggle delightedly.

A girl tugs on Bucky's shuka. “ _White Wolf_ ,” she says, and he squats to her level.

“ _What's up?_ ” he asks.

“Did she just say ‘white wolf’?” Steve asks.

“ _Can I do your hair?_ ”

“ _Sure._ ”

The girl gathers up his hair in her little hands, running her fingers through it before producing a hair-tie and fixing Bucky's hair into a bun. Steve stands and watches in wonder. She does it efficiently, petting his hair a little. From the easy smile on Bucky's face, he must let her do this a lot. “ _Thanks, cutie,_ ” he says when she’s done.

She strokes some of the flyaway strands of Bucky's hair for a moment longer. “ _White Wolf, will Steve herd the goats with us tonight?_ ”

“White Wolf,” Steve repeats. Bucky is studiously ignoring him.

“ _Can’t right now, Dembe._ ” Bucky says. “ _Steve just got here. Can you be in charge for me, for a bit?_ ”

Dembe nods, and he tickles her under the chin. She squeals, and she and her friends all start peeling off toward their herd, yelling “ _Bye Steve! Bye White Wolf!_ ”

“White Wolf,” Steve says for a third time.

“Change the record, Steve, I think it's broken,” Bucky says, standing up and raising his eyebrows at Steve, like he's daring him to laugh.

“Why'd they call you that?”

“I dunno,” Bucky says. “Shuri said it's because I was the first white person they'd ever seen, and the only one who sticks around here.”

“Like a lone wolf,” Steve says with a grin.

“Be nice,” Bucky chides.

“You’ve always had a way with kids.”

Bucky ducks his head. “I had sisters, right? Little sisters?”

“Yeah. Becca, Lillibet -”

“And Georgie, for my dad,” Bucky finishes. “I can picture their faces, sometimes.”

“That's good,” Steve says, airways suddenly feeling constricted. He decides to change the subject. “So, you speak Xhosa.”

“Shuri taught me, along with everything else. Couldn't get by if I didn't. Besides, languages come real easy to me now, since...well.”

“Right,” Steve says. “So you can still...the stuff they... taught you-”

Bucky shrugs. “You can replace the parts in a gun but it'll still shoot.”

“You're not a gun,” Steve says sharply.

“Hey, hey,” Bucky says, frowning and placing his hand on Steve's shoulder. “It's okay.” And he smiles, to show that it is. “Sure, HYDRA made my brain into Swiss cheese, and it sucked a big one, but the guys here… Steve, it was like a miracle. Do you know how even half the technology here works?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Well, I do, even though I'd never seen anything like it six months ago. The way they healed me, the things they showed me... Some of the holes might still be there but now they're more - _handy_. Like a sponge. Understand?”

Steve nods. It's been so long since he's heard Bucky speak at length about anything, or joke, and now he's doing both, and about this of all things.

In truth, Steve hadn't known what to expect. All their life, Bucky had been a charmer, could sweet-talk any girl into getting a soda with him any day of the week. If Steve had been a black cloud of righteous indignation (and he had), Bucky had been a ray of sunshine that came after the rain fall. He was whip-smart, and had a fast mouth – but growing up dirt poor with six bellies to fill at home had given him a self-deprecating streak a mile wide. Steve had figured that there were some parts of Bucky that HYDRA would scrub at so hard, they'd be impossible to retrieve. And he is different – _everything_ is different. But all this has stayed, and Steve is glad for it, grateful. So he smiles a little too, decides to try his luck. Leans in conspiratorially and says, “Handy holes, huh?”

Bucky snickers and shoves him a bit. “Easy, tiger. There's kids around.” He nods to the goats and Steve groans.

Bucky jerks his head toward the _banda_. “C’mon,” he says. He pulls the deep red drapes that constitute the door aside, going inside and motioning for Steve to enter. “Mi casa, su casa.”

The _banda_ is one completely round room. There's a square window with a thin drape covering it, rugs on the floor, a single bed by the wall opposite the door. Next to the door, a table, and beneath it a crate filled with cans, sacks of potatoes, rice and millet, a few bowls and some utensils. The bedsheets aren't made. There's a hook for shuka cloths, and a pile of books underneath the bed. A cup on the windowsill has a toothbrush and toothpaste in it. It smells like the food Steve had smelled on Bucky earlier, from a pot of what Steve assumes is stew languidly bubbling on a small induction cooker.

Steve pauses in the doorway when it dawns on him that this isn't just a place that Shuri and T’Challa set Bucky up in for rehabilitation. It's Bucky's home.

It gives him the same surge of emotion, too tangled to identify, as when he'd looked around Bucky's apartment in Romania. He suspects it's something to do with a deeply ingrained notion that he and Bucky shouldn't live apart, shouldn't _be_ apart. But Bucky had lived without him for over seventy years, whilst Steve slept under the ice.

None of this is simple enough to put into words, so instead Steve points at the induction cooker and says, “Don't those things run on electricity?”

“Not in Wakanda," Bucky says, going over to it and stirring the stew a little. “Come _in_ , Steve. Don't lurk, makes me antsy. You want food?”

“Yeah, that'd be great.”

“When's the last time you ate?”

“Sometime yesterday.”

Bucky tuts. “Still got me looking out for you, huh, honey?”

He goes to a small black box and opens it, and Steve realises it's a fridge. He can feel the blast of cold from the door, and it presumably doesn't run on electricity either. Bucky takes vegetables and a bowl of black-eyed beans and what Steve thinks looks like kind of fluffed wheat out the fridge and sets them on the table.

“What you making?”

“Umngqusho,” Bucky says. “The girls in the village taught me. Samp and beans. Tastes kinda like food from back home. Hope you don't mind things hot though.”

With a jolt, Steve realises that by _back home_ , Bucky means their home, in Brooklyn, a lifetime ago.

(After Steve's mother had died holding his hand, Steve had moved into Bucky's apartment. He'd been reluctant, had just wanted to be alone until the hurt went away and then some. But Bucky had taken him by the shoulder, his thumb pressing into Steve's collarbone. He’d said _I’m with you_ and given him a look that Steve wanted to drown in. And when Steve couldn’t face taking boxes of his mother's things down the block to sell so he could help make the rent, Bucky had carried all of them by himself, and when he'd come back, he'd let Steve cling to his suspenders and cry into his shirtfront.)

The memory of this, plus Bucky calling him _honey_ , has him reeling.

“Earth to Steve?”

“No, yeah,” he says, feeling winded, “you know me. I'll eat whatever.”

He watches Bucky crush a garlic clove with the heel of his hand, chop onions and potatoes, add them into a pot on the cooker.

“Can I help?” He asks.

“Sure, crank the heat on the stew,” Bucky instructs. “This'll be about fifteen minutes.”

Steve stirs the stew whilst Bucky pours a can of tomatoes into the pot and sprinkles in spices from a little basket on the table. They cook in silence for a while.

It's so achingly familiar that Steve half-expects Bucky to start humming Bing Crosby, to get Steve to take over so he can roll a cigarette, to complain about Rebecca's new boyfriend who came over to his folks’ place on Sunday after church. He half-expects Bucky to strike a match and say _I swear to God, if that putz had called my ma Freddie one more time, I was gonna rearrange his fuckin’ face right there at the table._

Of course, Bucky doesn't do, or say, any of that.

Instead, he asks, “What happened after we left Leipzig?”

His voice is brittle, and Steve thinks he is purposely not looking at him, tasting the umngqusho and clearly deciding it's done. He ducks under the table and grabs a bowl, setting it down. “Are your friends okay?”

Steve shifts a little. The stew is steaming and he tests how hot it is with the tip of his pinky. Bucky grabs another bowl, blows a little dust out of it. “They were arrested at the airport. Sent to this big prison in the middle of the Atlantic but -”

Bucky drops the bowl and Steve’s hand flashes out to grab it before it hits the floor and smashes. “The _Atlantic_?”

“Bucky, it's okay –”

He looks horrified. His hand is trembling a little and he presses it to the table in a fist. “Shit, _shit_ , this is exactly –”

“Bucky, listen to me –” Steve says, setting the bowl down.

“– what I didn't want, I _told_ you, Steve –”

“Buck,” Steve says firmly. “The umngqusho is catching.”

Bucky yanks the pots off the burner and starts furiously dumping the stew, samp and beans into the bowls. “I told you I wasn't worth it,” he says darkly.

“For one thing,” Steve says, covering Bucky's hand with his own to stop him. “You are. And for another, o ye of little faith,” Bucky scowls at Steve's teasing tone. “I busted them out. T’Challa and Natasha helped.”

Bucky sags a little. He sticks a spoon into the food and shoves a bowl in Steve’s direction. “You and your prison breaks, Rogers,” he grouses.

“Well, you know what they say about old habits.”

They sit cross-legged out in the sunshine and eat. The food is good, and it does remind Steve of home just like Bucky said, and they go back into the _banda_ for more, because there's more to be had.

When they sit down with their second helping, Bucky turns to Steve and simply says, “I’ve missed you.”

Steve looks at Bucky, looks and looks and thinks he'll never get tired of looking, and says, “I've missed you too.”

 

Steve stays for three days and it feels like he's stepped into a dream, a haven. The simple, decent life Wakanda has offered Bucky, it almost reminds Steve of their old life - or, rather, how he thinks people these days must imagine the past to be.

Steve knows better. Unlike their lives during the Depression, the food here is better, the weather is warmer, the people are kinder, and Steve Rogers could put Bucky Barnes in a fireman's lift if the mood really took him.

It's his last night before he's due to meet with the others in Mexico – he’s hitching a ride with T'Challa's girl Nakia, and from the look on Bucky's face, that's a big deal – and he's reminded once again that the past is not kind, or warm, or better.

Bucky had insisted they could share his bed, even citing his lack of a limb as proof they’d both squeeze in. (Decades ago, he’d said _we can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids_ in case Steve’s neighbours were listening, but Steve never slept on the couch once). But now, Steve was not convinced, did not trust himself, and had slept on worse than a woven rug in his life. He’s asleep on the floor when Bucky screams.

Bucky is already awake when Steve bolts up onto his knees by the bed. He's flat on his back, panting and sweating like he's just run a race, eyes wide and glassy.

( _Steve looks down at Bucky, mumbling his rank and serial number, drugged up and strapped down. His hands tremble something awful as he rips off the restraints._ )

“Buck?” He keeps his voice low, as if that could mask how it breaks on that single word. Bucky's eyes find his, and the haunted look on his face melts away.

( _“Is that…”_

 _“It's me. It's Steve.”_ )

His arm flails out, searching. Steve grabs his hand. “Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Bucky croaks. “I wake you up? Sorry.”

“Don't worry about it. Do you - can I do anything?”

Bucky sits up a little, supporting himself on his elbow. He smacks his lips. “There's water in the fridge. Would you mind…?”

“Sure thing,” Steve says, getting up. He brings a jug back to the bed and Bucky drinks deeply from it, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. He gestures for Steve to go ahead so he takes a pull too. It's almost a shock, how cool the water is, but it helps the way his guts feel like they're in knots. He takes the jug back to the fridge and when he sits down on the floor again, Bucky has his eyes closed and is breathing deeply through his nose then out through his mouth.

“Buck, are you -”

“It's okay. I just have to do my breathing things, and I'll be good.”

“You have breathing things?” Steve whispers.

“Yeah, for anxiety,” Bucky cracks open an eye, something wry in his expression. “I got a fair amount of that these days.”

For a few minutes, Steve just listens to Bucky’s breathing, the way he calms himself. “Bucky, if you want to talk about it -”

“I don't,” Bucky says, turning his head away from Steve.

“Okay.”

“I don't want you to hear about it either.”

“I don't mind -”

“Well, I mind,” Bucky says resolutely. He twists back toward Steve, reaching to cup Steve's face in his hand. He strokes Steve's cheek with his thumb and Steve's eyelids flutter closed for a moment to savour the touch. Bucky's voice is softer when he speaks again. “If I talk about it, it's still happening. But it's not. You know?”

“Yeah,” Steve says.

Bucky lays back down and rolls onto his left side. “Go back to sleep,” he says. “If we aren't up at sunrise, the kids’ll be in here, and they are not a gentle alarm clock.”

By the way his breathing evens out, Bucky slips back into sleep pretty easy. Steve sits up awake for a while, and finds himself wishing he could burn HYDRA to the ground all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapters should be updated sort of daily til the end of the week


	2. In which Bucky is a semi-stable one-hundred-year-old man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> formatting this fuckin thing is a nightmare

**One year ago**

As Steve makes it to the top of the hill, he stands for a moment and takes in the sun rising over Wakanda.

One of the villagers is milking a goat as the herd begin to graze for the day, and he raises a hand in greeting when he sees Steve. His children are sat sipping milk from a bowl, but they spot Steve and hurry over. Steve recognises Dembe, and he supposes the little one she helps toddle along with her is the baby her mother had a few months before the first time Steve visited.

“ _Hey, Dembe,_ ” he says, squatting down when they reach him. He’s fairly certain his Xhosa sounds terrible, (he’s been slowly but surely learning with a new kimoyo bead Okoye gave him but hasn’t given up on his earpiece yet), but when Dembe hears him speaking it, her smile grows huge. “ _Is this your little brother?_ ”

She hugs her arms around the little boy. “ _T’Challa, for the king,_ ” she says proudly.

“ _Hi, T’Challa,_ ” Steve says softly.

He covers his face with his hands, shy.

“ _This is White Wolf’s friend,_ ” Dembe says to him. “ _Don’t be scared. His name is Steve._ ”

T’Challa peeks through his fingers. “ _But Steve’s the goat,_ ” he whispers.

Dembe gives Steve a remarkably mature look, as if to say _kids, huh?_ But Steve just smiles. “ _You have the Black Panther’s name._ ” The boy nods. “ _I have a goat’s name._ ”

This makes T’Challa break into a sweet smile and Dembe laughs like she thinks Steve is a little dense. “ _No, it’s the other way. White Wolf said he called him little Steve because you’re Steve._ ” Then her brow puckers. “ _But you’re not little._ ”

“ _I used to be,_ ” he says, and winks at them.

“ _Dembe!_ ” Her father calls. “ _Time to get ready for school._ ”

“ _We just want to go see White Wolf!_ ” She calls. “ _Please, baba?_ ”

Her father glances at Steve, who spreads his hands innocuously. “ _Five minutes,_ ” he says to his daughter, tapping his kimoyo beads. She holds her hand in the air to show her beads are on her wrist, and Steve notices T’Challa has a single bead around his neck.

“ _Come on!_ ” Dembe says to Steve. “ _White Wolf is in the river._ ” She tears off down the hill. T’Challa manages a tiny burst of shaky speed after his sister and nearly topples over. Steve catches him with one hand. He looks at Steve, raises his chubby little arms and says very quietly, “ _Up._ ”

Steve carries him down to the river, where Dembe is at the bank, yelling “ _White Wolf!_ ” She’s wearing Bucky’s shuka like a cape.

“ _Aren’t you at school yet?_ ” Bucky yells from where he’s waist-deep in the river, but he's grinning. Dembe takes that as some sort of incentive and, with total disregard for her pyjamas, starts splashing into the water. “ _Dembe, no!_ ” Bucky protests. “ _Not for little eyes!_ ” But she’s already leaping on him, screaming _Wakanda forever!_

He lets her drag him under the surface. She emerges laughing and Bucky sticks his hand out the water and waves it at her before going limp. “ _White Wolf?_ ” She calls, bobbing in the water, trying not to look worried. “ _You okay?_ ”

Bucky bursts out the water, making Dembe scream and T’Challa hide his face in Steve’s chest. Bucky falls back into the water, cackling. Dembe swims for the bank, holding her arms out for her brother and booking it up the hill. T’Challa’s gurgling laughter carries as they go.

“Wow,” Steve says.

“Gets her every time,” Bucky says, ringing out his wet hair. When he’s sure the kids are gone, he starts striking out for the edge of the river where Steve is standing. By the time the water becomes shallow, it’s a bit too late for Steve to wonder if he should have averted his eyes, but he does anyway.

He's seen Bucky naked plenty of times, stripped off his clothes, touched his body - but that was a long time ago.

When he glances back up, Bucky is struggling to tie his shuka around his waist like a towel. He drops it and swears, and Steve doesn't look away. “Need a hand?” He asks without thinking, and cringes.

Bucky gives him a withering look. “Good one.”

“Sorry. But do you?”

“Sure,” Bucky holds out the shuka. “If it’ll stop you standing there like a lummox.”

Steve approaches and takes the shuka from Bucky. He loops it around Bucky's waist and knots it at one side. Bucky claps him on the shoulder. “You're a doll,” he says, moving past him and levering himself down onto the ground. He pats the ground next to him. “Take a load off.”

Steve sits, legs crossed. Bucky lays down on the grass.

“So, what, you just air dry these days?”

“Yep,” Bucky says, eyes closed, pillowing his head with his hand. “Like panties on a laundry line.”

“Charming.”

Steve takes a moment to unabashedly gaze down at Bucky whilst his eyes are shut, to drink him in as he sunbathes. The circuitry of Bucky's prosthetic shoulder glints in the light, most of it hidden by the watertight seal.

Steve remembers when they had staggered arm-in-arm off T’Challa's plane and were taken straight to a med lab. After a hissed conversation in Xhosa and stilted introductions made by T'Challa, Shuri had been willing to inspect the ruined stump of the arm HYDRA bestowed upon Bucky, that Tony had blasted off. She’d become so angry at the idea that people had purposefully fitted something with such brutality and butchery to a human being that she had thrown a tool across the room. Bucky had flinched at the sound. Shuri had rounded on T’Challa. “He needs a surgeon, not a scientist,” she had said.

“No surgery,” Bucky had growled.

Shuri had got right up in Bucky's face, unafraid, incandescent with rage, and said through gritted teeth, “Listen to me, white man. You keep that piece of junk on your body, it will kill you. Nobody dies in my lab. Do you understand?”

So Bucky had agreed, and ten hours later he was sat back in the lab with Steve. Face clean of blood, stitched up, with brand new neurotransmitters and a vibranium shoulder joint, doped up on enough painkillers to put down a rhinoceros. When the lab techs asked him if he'd like to trial any 3D-printed prosthetics, he'd broken Steve's heart by replying, “You guys got a cryogenic chamber here?”

Where the scars stretching across his chest from the shoulder had once been red and angry, they're now faded to white lines, thanks to what Steve assumes is Shuri and her team's ministrations. There is no scarring from Bucky’s surgery here in Wakanda. Steve may be biased – and he can admit that he is – but Bucky looks good. Even better than the last time he saw him. He's chiselled, the same sharp cut of his cheek, jaw, hip bone, but not in the starved way he had been when they'd fought on the helicarrier. He's still toned, Steve's eyes drawn to his washboard abs and the water collecting in rivulets, but he's not bulked up like he was in Romania, like his body had to be ready to hit whoever came after him and make sure they stayed down. He's tanned, and healthy, and –

Bucky is trailing his fingers up Steve's thigh. “It's a dollar to look, soldier.”

Steve looks up quickly and realises he's been caught. “Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat and trying to quell the searing want bubbling up inside him.

Bucky just smirks, resting his hand on Steve's knee. The touch feels like a brand, even through Steve's clothes. “Been thinking about my hair.”

“Yeah? Any thoughts worth a penny?”

“I dunno. Short, long. Not sure. Haven’t had a haircut since before Azzano. Might ask one of the fellas from the village to help me out.”

“The kids'll be devastated,” Steve points out and Bucky guffaws. He squints up at Steve.

“What do you think?” He asks.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you, Einstein. What do you think?”

“I -” Steve starts and tries again, “Whatever you want, Buck.”

Bucky blows a raspberry. “Cop out. You sound like my therapist. Bucky was a commie murder bot for nearly a century and now every choice must be presented as an opportunity to exercise his newly reinstated free will.” He raises his eyebrows at Steve accusingly.

“Your therapist called you a commie murder bot?”

“Steve, c’mon,” Bucky insists, sitting up. “You're the only person alive who’s seen me with short hair. And frankly, the only person I trust. Last time I asked Shuri about this, she told me I should get a perm. Then she showed me _what_ a perm is!” Bucky widens his eyes comically to show the gravity of this. He hugs his knees. “I know it's not trench warfare, but I'd still like to know what you think.”

Steve looks at the drying ends of Bucky's hair curling around his chin, and he thinks of how he used to like to scritch his fingers through the short hairs at the back of Bucky's neck. But he also thinks of how Bucky used to spend an eternity fussing in the mirror with his pomade before a date, and now Bucky doesn't fuss over much at all.

“Keep it long,” he decides aloud.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, soft, seemingly insecure.

“I like it the way it is.”

Bucky nods, like that's the decision made. Then he frowns and taps one of his kimoyo beads. A holograph appears that reads 07:25. He loses a little colour in his face. “Ah, shit,” he says. “Lemme get dressed, hang tight.” He stands up, shoving his feet into his sandals.

“Buck?” Steve asks, twisting his head to watch Bucky retreat to his _banda _. “What's up?”__

“Nothing!” Bucky calls. “One sec!”

Steve clambers to his feet, wanders over to the _banda_ and Bucky emerges in a different shuka with a fresh t-shirt underneath. “Where's the fire?” Steve asks, perplexed.

Bucky huffs. He looks unhappy. “You picked a hell of a morning to get here. First you see me in the shower -” Steve lets out an unimpressed snort “- and now…” Bucky holds out a hair tie. “Will you tie my hair up please?”

“Okay,” Steve says, and he goes around to Bucky's back, and pulls his damp hair into a bun. He can pin his shuka and the sling around his left shoulder fine by himself, Steve has gathered, but he seems to like someone else doing his hair. “Buck, tell me what's up.”

“I have to go see Shuri at nine,” he says, when Steve comes back to face him. “For my six-month check-up.”

“Alright,” Steve says, nodding. “No worries. I'll come with, if you want.”

“Steve,” Bucky says very clearly, which means Steve is being slow on the uptake, “I was being delicate saying check-up. She's making sure the trigger words are still gone for good. Haven’t healed back into my brain or some bullshit.”

“Oh,” Steve says.

“Yeah. _Oh._ ”

“Then I’m definitely coming with you,” Steve says, in the voice he used to use to show the conversation is over, but he now associates with Clint Barton fluttering his hand in front of his face and saying _ooh, Captain_.

Luckily, Bucky doesn't fan himself. He just says, "Go figure," and starts walking. They walk to the city's edge again then get the train to the palace. Shuri and T’Challa are waiting for them outside. T'Challa smiles at them both then looks at Bucky, stretching out a hand for him to grasp.

“How are you, my friend?”

“Peachy,” Bucky says, but Steve can tell he's nervous. He turns to Shuri. “Shall we?”

Instead of going into the palace or to the labs like Steve expects, they walk to some gardens lined with tall, thin trees and flowers with colours made brilliant in the sunlight. Shuri and Bucky walk ahead together so Steve hangs back with T’Challa. “If you are wondering why we do this outside,” T’Challa says, and Steve will never get used to how intuitive he is, “the answer is that out here, no one is confined. Physically or otherwise.”

“I get it,” Steve says, and he does.

Up ahead, Shuri is passing Bucky the canteen she’s been holding and he drinks from it without question.

“What's she giving him?” Steve asks.

“Mango juice, to keep his blood sugar up.” T’Challa says, smiling at the hint of concern he clearly detected in Steve's voice.

When they reach a spot Shuri and Bucky seem satisfied with, Steve sees Okoye and Ayo at the further end of the garden. At the sight of their king, they stand straight and cross their arms over their chests. T’Challa does the same, then waves at the three children sat with them, who all wave back. Okoye spies Bucky and must have some sense of what they are doing, for she says something to Ayo and ushers the children away. The gentle way she touches them and the way they unquestioningly take her hands when she holds them out makes Steve wonder if they are hers. Ayo remains, and watches from afar.

Bucky gives the canteen back to Shuri, who passes it to T’Challa. They move a little away from them. She takes his pulse and they do some sort of breathing exercise together for a moment. Then Bucky walks a few yards back from Shuri. Steve sees movement out the corner of his eye, and he can't stop his mouth dropping open when the Black Panther suit ripples over T’Challa's body in a haze of purple.

“Is that -” He starts then stops himself before he says _necessary_.

T'Challa's voice is as calm as ever. “Shuri and I have been working with Bucky for a long time now. I have faith in him, and more importantly, Shuri does too. But she is still my little sister, Steve.” Steve bows his head, ashamed, but T’Challa bends his head closer to Steve's. “You are here for him. This will go well.”

Bucky looks very solemn.

“Ready?” Shuri asks.

“Yeah,” he says, and shuts his eyes.

Steve realises Shuri doesn't fiddle with any of her kimoyo beads, doesn’t have a tablet with her, not even a scrap of paper, nor - thankfully - the red book with the black star. She must know the words by heart now.

And so she does, calling out in a voice smooth as a mirror pool, “ _Zhelaniye_ ,”

Bucky shudders like he's cold.

“ _Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat’. Rassvet. Pech’. Devyat’. Dobroserdechnyy. Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu. Odin,_ ” Shuri says. “ _Gruzovoy vagon_.”

Steve knows that one. _Freight car._

Bucky stops shivering and goes completely still.

Steve is suddenly gripped with a wave of fear so intense he feels like his legs might go out from under him. Something cool touches his arm and he looks down. T’Challa is offering him the canteen. He takes it, and he doesn’t even try to control how the gratitude makes his face do something strange, and he takes a sip of mango juice. He thinks T’Challa gave him this because Steve must have looked like he was about to faint, but really, he just feels reassured by the idea that whatever happens, he and Bucky both have the taste of mango juice in their mouths right now. It’s silly, but Steve will take what he can get.

“ _Soldat?_ ” Shuri asks. Her voice doesn’t waver. She doesn't sound afraid.

There’s a moment that stretches on for an eternity, and Steve hangs onto the sweetness on his tongue to belay feeling like he might fly apart at any second.

Bucky opens his eyes and grins. “Nothing,” he says.

He crosses the garden to Shuri and looks down at her like she hung the stars. Briefly, Steve feels like he's gazing in on a private moment, and maybe he is. Shuri saved Bucky's life, after all.

“You’re fine,” she says, smiling too. “Like always.”

“ _Because of you,_ ” he says in Xhosa, then in English, "I'll never be able to repay you for what you've done.”

Shuri makes a cross with her arms over her chest.

Bucky seems to make a split-second decision and he leans down and kisses her quickly on the cheek.

Then Shuri does something funny – that Steve recognises from the forties, whenever Bucky would lean against the bar and look at a girl from under his long lashes. She starts to play with her hair.

“Oh boy,” he mutters.

The Panther helm dissolves, revealing T’Challa rolling his eyes. The suit crawls back into the clawed necklace, and he goes to Shuri and puts both his hands on her shoulders. He whispers in her ear, “ _He's too old for you._ ”

Shuri snorts, clearly appalled by what T'Challa is suggesting. Then she gives Bucky a measured once over which, by the look on Bucky’s face, he does not enjoy. She whispers back to her brother, “ _He's cute for a white boy, like Mark Hamill in Star Wars._ ”

“If you wanted those secret sibling chats,” Bucky says, his cheeks a little pink. “You shouldn't have taught me Xhosa.”

Shuri is smirking and she folds her arms, eyebrows raised. “Do you know who Mark Hamill is?”

“No,” Bucky says, then looks to Steve for assistance.

“She’s right,” Steve says, going to Bucky and throwing an arm round him. “He is cute in _Star Wars_.”

“Anyway, White Wolf,” Shuri says, shrugging off her brother. “Let’s go to my lab. I know you want to.”

Bucky lights up. “Steve, you gotta see the stuff this kid cooks up. It would make H. G. Wells eat his heart out.”

The lab _is_ like something from a sci-fi novel, just like when they'd got patched up here. Steve had forgotten, amid everything, that this was the kind of thing Bucky went nuts for. He watches with a full heart as Bucky hovers behind Shuri, and she does not wait for him to ask questions, just explains the holographic displays, the prototypes, as she goes. Weapons, clothing, environmentally-friendly car engines, things they are shipping out to other countries now the world knows Wakanda is paving the way to the future. Things Steve doesn't even recognise or could guess a use for without her steady stream of calm, confident explanation. She pulls up 3-D schematics for a prosthetic arm and glides it over to Bucky with a beseeching little pout. To Steve's surprise, he takes the cap off his shoulder and the hologram connects to the vibranium. The only thing he does with it is flip Steve off, which doesn't surprise him at all.

Shuri even lets them have a closer look at all her brother’s different Black Panther suits. Some are old, some she says she hasn't even shown T’Challa yet, which shows a kind of implicit trust that makes Steve feel almost guilty for everything she and T’Challa have given them, whilst asking for nothing in return.

After a few hours, Bucky graciously tells Shuri he’s ready to go home. Kali, one of the Dora Milaje, takes them to the hill near Bucky’s place. On the journey, Bucky grows subdued. He offers Steve food but doesn’t eat any himself, taking up the long stick propped by the door and going outside. Steve watches him swing the stick over his shoulder and hurries out after him. Bucky doesn’t say a word when Steve catches up to him, and Steve doesn’t pry.

They spend the afternoon quietly weaving through the goat herd as they mosey across the grassy plain. Steve brings up the rear when Bucky leads them to the river to drink. The children come running up the road after school, kicking up dust onto their uniforms, and they and Bucky shepherd the herd into their kraal. Steve hangs back from this, not wanting to mess up whatever kind of knack they have for getting the goats in. Two of the little ones who are too young to help cling to his wrists and beg to be picked up, so he tosses them both in the air and catches them. When Dembe approaches Bucky, gazing at her friends who are weak with laughter in Steve’s arms with pleading eyes, he smiles down at her and lets her ride on his shoulders on the way back into the village.

That night, Bucky is staring into the fire they cooked dinner on, and he says, “I don't want my arm back.”

“I know,” Steve says, and that’s that.  


When Steve has to go the next day, he shakes T'Challa's hand and is astonished when Shuri hugs him. “Thank you, again, for everything,” he says.

T'Challa smiles that soft, kind smile. “You are welcome any time. Be safe on your travels. Come, Shuri.” He leads her away and she waves, grinning.

When they’re gone, Bucky pulls Steve in for a hug. “See you soon.”

“See ya, Buck. Take care.”

Steve goes to ascend the ramp into the jet, then, “Honey, _wait_ -”

He turns around and Bucky hugs him tight again.

“I love you,” he whispers right in Steve's ear. It sends a lightning bolt down Steve's spine. No one has said those words to him in years.

“Love you too,” he breathes into Bucky's neck, and it's the easiest thing in the world.

At the top of the ramp, Steve finds himself turning and calling out, “Don't do anything stupid until I get back.”

Bucky's smile is like the sun bursting through the clouds. “How can I?” He counters in perfect tandem. “You're taking all the stupid with you.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i mention i love shuri. also the feels just get worse from here people.


	3. In which it’s Bucky’s party and no one cries, but it’s a close thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man this chapter absolutely kicked my ass... 
> 
> bucky + alcohol = human disaster. past bucky/nat and very bad language.

**Six months ago**

The sun is setting. Sam raps his knuckles against the doorframe of Bucky's _banda_. 

“ _Hello?_ ” Bucky calls in Xhosa. Steve has stopped wearing his translator these days, but Okoye provided ones for Natasha, Sam and Wanda when they'd got here two hours ago.

“Special delivery,” Sam replies. “One supersoldier and three idiots who got stuck with him.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Nat grumbles. 

The next second, Bucky rips the drapes aside and sticks his head out. The way he's taking them all in speaks volumes – they must look terrible. None of them have slept, eaten or showered in three days since fleeing Wanda’s place in the Canary Islands. 

(She’d been working as a shop assistant, pretending to be a soft-spoken girl from Moldova who spoke no English and only enough Spanish to get by. Steve had felt awful for crashing there but they'd all been run ragged and she’d hugged each of them for a long time when they arrived on her door step. But they'd gotten a little too comfortable, had kept their heads down but apparently not low enough. Natasha had called in one of her more insalubrious favours to keep quiet about their jet in a car garage, but it came to pass that Secretary Ross wasn't opposed to paying people off if they were in the business of ratting out rogue Avengers.)

“Huh,” Bucky says, then eyes Sam. “Funny, the website only specified one idiot.” Then he glances at Natasha and Wanda. “Guess that makes you two a free gift.” 

Nat smirks and puts one hand on her hip. “Thanks, Barnes.” 

“Man,” Sam says, shaking his head. He looks at Steve like he’s hoping for support.

“Good try, pal,” Steve says. 

“How did I come out of that looking like a moron?” 

“Because you are a moron, Wilson,” Bucky replies, stepping out of his _banda_. “It's refreshing. Thanks for stopping by.” 

Steve can tell beneath the ribbing, Bucky means this. He always asks how Steve's team are doing, where they are, if they’ve briefly scattered when he'll see them next, and had been sympathetic when Steve had told Bucky that Clint and Scott were gone, back to their families in the States and under the watchful eye of the feds.

Sam nods at Bucky like he knows he means it too. “Yeah, well, we're just passing through on our way to South Africa.” 

Bucky eyes Steve. “What you hiding in the back there for? Come give me a hug.” 

Sam, Wanda and Natasha part like the red sea and Steve obeys. He suspects the three of them are having a non-verbal conversation comprised of certain looks over his and Bucky's shoulders but he can't find it in himself to care.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” Steve says when they part. 

Bucky looks bemused. “It's my birthday?”

Steve blinks. “It's March 13th, so. It was a few days ago. Don't you -” 

“Can't say I've kept track,” Bucky says, then his eyebrows draw together. “I missed your last birthday, I guess?” 

“You missed mine,” Sam mutters. 

Bucky gives him a flat look, although his mouth is twitching. “Good thing I don't give a shit about you then, isn't it?” 

“Children, share nicely,” Steve says. 

“Uh, speaking of children.” Sam points behind Steve. They turn and see two of the village kids running toward them.

“ _White Wolf! White Wolf!_ ”

“What are they saying?” Wanda asks. “A wolf?” 

“They're talking about Bucky,” Steve says. 

“ _What?_ ” 

“Shut up, Sam,” Bucky snaps.

“Did you ask them to call you that?” 

“Oh yeah.” Bucky shoots Sam a devastatingly scathing look. “I thought it was catchier than Winter Soldier.” 

The kids slow their roll when they get closer. Steve thinks they might be twins, a boy and a girl around eight or nine years old. They seem to forget why they've come at the sight of unfamiliar faces, stopping and holding hands, looking a little nervous.

“ _Hey, Zoya, Ada,_ ” Bucky goes to them, kneeling. “ _Why aren't you at home?_ ” 

Zoya points at Natasha and Wanda and says a word that Steve thinks means _coloniser_ but might mean something a little ruder. 

“ _Hey, watch the language,_ ” Bucky reproaches gently. “ _They’re nice ladies._ ” Natasha lets out a breath that's almost a laugh, exchanging a look with Wanda, who raises her eyebrows.

Ada, by comparison, seems enraptured by Natasha's hair. She reaches out toward her. Natasha moves forward and squats down, tilting her head so her hair falls like a curtain. Ada runs her fingers reverently through the platinum strands. “ _White wolf,_ ” she whispers. 

“ _Spider._ ” Bucky says, then in English, “Black Widow.” 

“Black -” 

“ _Ada_ ,” Her brother hisses in a worried little whisper. “ _The goats._ ” 

Ada gasps suddenly and turns to Bucky with wide, doleful eyes. “ _White Wolf,_ ” she says, looking so upset that Bucky holds out his hand to her and she clutches his fingers in her little hands. “ _We were trying to put the herd to bed, but the gate got broken when it rained. The goats will run away._ ” 

Zoya pats Bucky's muscled arm. “ _You are strong. Please help?_ ” 

“ _Yes. Come on._ ” Bucky stands, still holding Ada’s hand, and Ada takes Zoya's.

Bucky turns to Steve and the others. “I won't be long. If the goats get to the jungle, we're screwed.” 

“It’s okay. We can wait,” Steve says. 

The three of them take off jogging up the hill. Nat, Sam and Wanda turn to look at Steve. “Is that what he's been doing since he got out of cryo?” Wanda ask quietly. “Keeping goats? Helping children?” 

“From what I've seen? Yeah.”

“He seems happy, Steve,” Sam says, something tender in his expression at seeing Bucky holding hands with children.

Bucky returns around ten minutes later. He smiles at them. “Thanks, I had to take the kids home. The fence had sunk into the mud, and some of the goats had trampled it a bit, but it’s all good.”

Natasha checks her watch. “Back to the jet,” she says. 

Bucky’s face falls instantly. “You're leaving already?” 

“Not yet,” Steve says. “We’re going to the palace, get changed, grab some things.” 

Bucky looks down at his muddy shuka. “Let me take this off.” 

“Buck, no, you're okay,” Steve starts, worried Bucky feels self-conscious, or that Steve has embarrassed him. Bucky just moves between them, going into his banda. Steve ducks his head and he feels Nat’s fingers touch his hand. 

“Barnes,” Sam says, leaning against the door and looking in. 

Steve recognises the tone he's using - it's the one from the VA meeting Steve went to all those years ago. The rush of affection he suddenly feels for Sam is increased by Bucky griping, “Quit peeping, Wilson.” 

“You're fine, pretty boy, stop making a drama,” Sam continues. 

Bucky emerges in a loose t-shirt, sling gone, and calf-length shorts made of some billowy material. He's brushed his hair. “No drama,” he says. “But Shuri would bust a gut if I turned up covered in goat shit.” 

When they get to the hangar, Bucky hangs back from the jet. 

“What's wrong?” Steve asks. 

“I’ll wait here,” he says, eyeing the stolen Avengers jet warily.

“You bet you're waiting there,” Sam says, and Nat hops up onto the wing to get to the cockpit to lower the ramp. “I'm gonna be peeling off this nasty tac gear and you ain't bought a ticket to the gun show.” He flexes his bicep a little. 

Bucky levels Sam a hurt look. “An arm joke, Sam, really? And you were pararescue too.” 

He looks concerned. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t -” 

Bucky snorts. “Can't believe you fell for that.” 

Sam is appalled. “You are such a dick.” 

“That's what you get for watching me get dressed.”

Natasha approaches them, the ramp lowering behind her. “I have underboob sweat,” she says, delicate eyebrows raised. “So, if you boys are quite done flirting, I'd like to change into something that isn't skin-tight Kevlar.”

“Here, here - Buck, _behave,_ ” Steve says, dodging Bucky's hand when he attempts to swat Steve on the ass. 

Sam stares at him for a moment and Bucky bares his teeth. “You want one too, birdbrain?” he asks, wiggling his fingers. 

Sam backs away. “Man, you need a time out.” 

Steve checks over his shoulder as he follows his team to the jet and sees Bucky go over to talk to the kingsguard, who relax their vigilant stances and smile as he approaches. They emerge a few minutes later, relieved to take off their gear even for a while. They are wearing some of the spare clothes they'd allowed themselves the luxury of buying back in La Palma, that they'd hidden on the jet as soon as they were purchased, just in case. Wanda was forced to leave everything but her purse and the clothes on her back at her apartment when they made a run for it, so Steve gives her one of his t-shirts and she wears it like a dress.

Nat looks very pretty in a summer dress covered in big sunflowers. Steve notices Bucky's eyes inexplicably sweep over her, up and down, and land on the pastel-pink cardboard box she's carrying.

Wanda holds out a square envelope to Bucky. Bucky blushes. “You didn't,” he says to them. 

“Don't act like it was our idea,” Sam says. “We just couldn't stand seeing Steve mope around once he remembered it was your birthday.” He claps his hands together and looks at Wanda and Natasha. “Shower first or drinks first? T'Challa offered us both.” 

“How about drinks in the shower?” Nat asks, handing the cake to Steve. She loops her arm through Wanda’s, and all five of them follow Obasi, a member of the kingsguard, out the hangar.

They take an elevator to the residential wing of the palace where they can clean up.

Bucky gestures to the cake with his card. “How did you even get this here?” 

“We made a stop in France before deciding going further into Europe was a bad idea.” 

“ _France?_ For a _cake_? What the _fuck_?” 

“Steve made us,” Sam mutters.

“I wanted to,” Steve says simply. “We got the card in La Palma though. Well. I looked at it, then Wanda stole it.” 

“You _stole_ a birthday card?” Bucky turns to look fully at Wanda, his face something between surprised and impressed.

“I’m good at shoplifting,” she says, eyes glowing red for a second. “We paid for the cake, if that helps.” 

“It _doesn't_. You shouldn't have done this. It's ridiculous.”

“It's red velvet,” Steve says plaintively.

“What the hell is red velvet?” 

“Um.” Steve looks at his teammates but they shrug. Obasi is shaking his head like he doesn't know either. “It's like chocolate cake. But... it's red? The guy in the shop recommended it.”

He opens the box a little and Bucky and Obasi peer in. The icing is white, with red crumbs sprinkled on top. The awkward, almost uncomfortable, look on Bucky’s face makes it seem like he had expected _happy 101st!_ to be piped on it. 

Obasi looks at Bucky with his eyebrows raised. “ _Looks nice,_ ” he says to him in Xhosa. 

This makes Bucky smile. “ _I haven't had cake since nineteen forty,_ ” he tells him.

Obasi shows them to a few bathrooms on the residential floors. Natasha takes Wanda by the elbow and says, “We’ll share, a bathroom each is insane.” Obasi looks like he's going to insist but Natasha just shakes her head, looking pointedly at Sam. “Thank you, but I've seen worse than Wanda’s boobs the past year." 

“Rude,” Sam says. “That shower cubicle in Syria was the best ten minutes of your life and you know it.” 

“It was the cleanest ten minutes that month, and that's all I know,” Natasha says with a saccharine smile, shutting the bathroom door.

As Steve and Bucky walk past the bathroom Sam had practically run into, Steve can hear him whispering _thank you sweet holy Jesus_ when he turns the shower on. 

Obasi takes the cake from Steve when they reach another bathroom for him. When Bucky follows Steve right in and sits on the toilet, Steve doesn't even think twice about it.

Whilst Steve stands under the heavenly spray of hot water, he watches Bucky inspecting the card. He slips a finger under the lip of the envelope, extracting the card. On the front, it says _I GOT YOU THIS CHEESY BIRTHDAY CARD_. And there's a block of cheese with a little smiley face wearing a party hat. It makes Bucky laugh and shake his head, “Swiss cheese. You fucker.”

He flips open the card. Inside the message reads, 

_Dear Buck,_  
_Many happy returns._  
_Love,_  
_Steve._

Bucky's smile has gone soft. “ _Love Steve,_ ” he says. “You are too much.” 

Steve smiles to himself as he lathers up his hair. He's standing at the mirror shaving when Bucky says, “Hey. Thank you.”

“Anything for you,” Steve replies. 

Once Steve is towelled off and dressed again, Bucky opens the bathroom door and the steam billows out into the cool air of the palace. Obasi is waiting for them and he points to the door of the room the others are in.

“ _Thanks, Obasi_. I wanna give Shuri some of that cake. All kids like chocolate cake, right?” Bucky says. “Please tell me there's no candles. The guys better not be hiding somewhere about to sing to me.” 

“We’re not _that_ prepared.” Steve says. 

“Thank God.” 

They find Shuri and T’Challa hosting the rest of Steve's team, lounging in one of the palace’s beautifully furnished visiting rooms, all with brightly-coloured drinks in their hands. The cake has been given pride of place on a low table in the middle of the room, with lit candles on it. When Bucky enters the room they all spring to their feet and start singing _Happy Birthday_. Bucky is so mortified he turns to flee but runs right into Steve, who is laughing so hard he can barely stand. 

They eat curry and cake together. After Shuri has been sent to bed, the drinks start to flow with a little more abandon. 

Wanda stands up at one point, wobbling a little, and announces, “I’m going to the jet to make a phone call.”

“Tell Vis we miss him!” Sam yells as she leaves, earning himself a cushion to the face from Natasha.

An hour later, Steve (who is stone-cold sober) and T'Challa (who isn't) are at an arm-wrestling impasse. Sam loudly declares it a draw, throwing an arm around both of them.

“Let's go, brother,” T’Challa says to Sam. 

“Nah, I'm a regular dude! A regular dude!” Sam protests as T’Challa grips his hand.

It’s then Steve notices Bucky isn't sat with them anymore, and neither is Nat.

There's a balcony that overlooks the city and the trees beyond just outside the room, and this is where Steve finds them. Natasha has a chair near the balcony's edge and is holding her glass, which makes Steve think she's been out here a while. She relishes open sky and fresh air, he's found, now more than ever. 

Bucky has taken the other seat. 

“Never got to thank you for what you did at the airport,” he says, with no preamble. He sounds tipsy. 

(Steve had thought Bucky would be like him, physically unable to imbibe, but it had become very apparent that their serums didn't function the same when Bucky had gone to swap the hand his drink was in, and apparently had forgotten he only had one hand. It was a combination of Steve's reflexes and a burst of red light from Wanda's hand that preserved the glass from smashing. The drink could not be saved, for which Bucky had profusely apologised to T'Challa, who had laughed so loudly that Obasi had peeked in to see what was so funny.)

“I did it for Steve.” Natasha sounds steadier, but that’s not saying much, and Steve suspects she's just better at hiding it. “He saved my life. I owed him.” 

“You could at least recognise me.”

“Pardon?”

“You said that in Berlin. Didn’t remember ‘til I saw you in that dress. You could at least recognise me.”

“I was trying to stop you from strangling me to death. But I’m glad you like my dress.” She goes to get up but Bucky reaches out and grabs her wrist. Steve is amazed that Natasha allows it. 

“Natalia,” he says and she freezes. They both rise to their feet. Steve feels anxiety drop like a stone in his stomach. “That was your name, right?” 

“Once.” Natasha’s voice is hard but when Bucky steps into her space, she allows that too. If anything, Steve would say she shifts closer to him.

“We knew each other in the Red Room. Didn’t we?”

“What do you remember?”

“Not a lot. Little girls … in ballet costumes? Tchaikovsky on the piano. Or… was it Chesnokov?” 

Natasha shakes her head, her pale hair shimmering in the moonlight. “You sure as hell didn't teach me ballet.” 

Bucky still has his fingers circled around Nat’s wrist. “What did I teach you?” 

“Where the heart is. How to shoot someone so they die instantly. How to shoot someone so they don't.”

“We had missions together?”

“One. I was nineteen the next time HYDRA loaned you to the KGB. I had to go deep cover in the States. Your American accent was flawless.” 

Bucky barks out a bitter laugh. 

“The two of you are our greatest achievements, they told me. Our best. You make Russia proud.” 

“Well, that was mighty nice of them. HYDRA never said shit like that to me. All stick and no carrot.” 

“They were wrong,” Natasha's voice is sharp with thinly-veiled disgust. 

Bucky’s false bravado seems to be breathed out of him as sighs. It's dark out, but Steve can see that he's stroking his thumb against the inside of Natasha's wrist. 

“What d’you mean? Please tell me. Why do I look at you…and know I oughta feel something, but nothing’s there?” 

Natasha downs the rest of her drink. “The mission lasted almost six months. Your conditioning started to…wear thin.” 

“They must’ve shown you the book.”

“I knew your words. Never used them.”

“Why not?” Bucky whispers. 

There's a long pause where Steve thinks she won't answer. She’ll turn, leave, give away his position and make him look like an ass. But he can't make himself move and Natasha doesn’t leave. She shifts her wrist so she's holding Bucky's hand. 

“Because… your American accent was _flawless_. You were kind, gentle. You made me laugh. HYDRA didn’t programme their weapons to be like that.”

“What happened?”

“What always happened. They found out. HYDRA came to collect you themselves. As punishment I was sent on a mission I was meant to die on and that's where I ran right into Clint. And the next time I saw you, you ran my car off the road in Odessa.” 

“M’sorry.” 

“Don't be. I'm not Natalia anymore. And you're not the Asset.” 

“That six months…” Bucky’s voice is raw. “Was it worth it?” 

Natasha surprises Steve by kissing Bucky on the cheek. By the look on Bucky's face, he's astounded too. “I hope you had a good birthday,” she says, and she lets go of Bucky's hand. His hand seems suspended in the air for a moment, like he’s going to reach out for her again. Then he lets it drop to his side. 

She smirks. “Steve's eavesdropping, by the way.” 

_Busted._ Steve hangs his head. 

“I know,” Bucky says, which is equally embarrassing. 

Natasha goes, and she looks him dead in the face as she returns to the room where Sam and T’Challa have started singing. Steve has enough self-awareness to look appropriately guilty. 

“You gonna leave me out here alone like an asshole or what?” Bucky calls. Steve trails out onto the balcony and Bucky watches his approach, leant against the balcony, looking sullen. “You suck at spying.” 

Steve takes Natasha's vacant seat and Bucky slumps into the other one, hand covering his face.

“So –”

“Don’t,” Bucky says. 

There’s a moment of silence, then they both go to speak but Bucky gets there first. “What happened to Carter?” 

“Sharon?” Steve asks, frowning. 

“Who?”

“She got us our gear in Germany.” 

“Oh, _her_. The one you sucked face with in front of me like you were proving some point.” 

“I was saying thank you,” Steve says stiffly. 

“Uh-huh. No, not her, bozo. Pegs. She gone by the time you were defrosted?” 

Steve draws in a sharp breath. He doesn't know why Bucky is asking this, but if it's to hurt him, to get back at him for listening in on a private conversation, it's a low blow. But the way Bucky looks at him through his fingers, a little hazy but in earnest… Steve now knows about the girl Bucky lost, so he supposes turnabout is fair play.

“She was still alive. In a home. Alzheimer’s. She… She passed just over a year ago. I was in London for her funeral when I… when I heard about the UN bombing.” 

Now it’s Steve’s turn to look away, eyes smarting. 

“Fuck,” Bucky says. “She was a good gal. You two deserved better.” 

_So did you, and Nat,_ Steve thinks. _And so did we._

There's something growing in Steve's chest, hard and sharp, and he doesn't want to call it jealousy but there's not really any other name. To Steve's knowledge, the Black Widow had first encountered the Winter Soldier when he shot her through the stomach, and until then, he had been nothing to her but smoke in the wind.

He'd had no idea, had not even entertained the notion, that Natasha and Bucky could have _known_ each other. That they could have had a shared history, an experience, a _relationship_ , that totally existed outside the realm of their association through Steve. Steve knows he should be comforted by the idea that Bucky found even a short-lived moment of solace amid the bloodbath of his imprisonment but, well – Steve has never pretended to be perfect, or clear-sighted, or selfless, especially when it comes to Bucky.

“You and Nat were together.” 

And just like that, Bucky’s shutters go slamming down. His eyes slide away from Steve’s face and up to the canopy of stars glittering over their heads. “She’s lucky Barton found her. No ‘together’ with HYDRA. Just... They just pointed you in whatever direction they wanted and said _ubit' dlya nas i ne sprashivat', pochemu._ ”

The night air is warm, but hearing Bucky speak Russian chills Steve to the bone. 

“You loved her though,” he says, quietly, so his voice doesn't break. 

He can see Bucky's jaw clenching. “You listening or not? I don’t _know_. Doesn’t _matter_.”

“Why can you remember so much about - me - us?” Steve pushes. “And not Natasha?” 

Bucky’s head snaps down to meet Steve’s gaze. His face is a jumbled mess of upset, angry and confused. 

“How can you ask me that?” he rasps. “Whatever I felt for her…I went in that –that _chair_ and it got murdered. In Berlin, he – I – the Soldier, he knew he should remember her. That she meant something. But he couldn’t. She got _ripped_ out. Gone. Forever. Don’t pass go. Don’t collect two hundred dollars. But you – Steve...” Bucky edges his chair forward until it’s right up against Steve’s, shifts his whole body toward him. “Don’t you get it? Why d’you think those cunts kept microwaving my fucking brain? Nothing they did could get you out for good. You’re part of me.”

Steve bites his lip hard to stop himself from weeping. “You're drunk.” 

Bucky buries his face in Steve's shoulder. His voice is muffled when he says, “Oh, honey.” 

(That word. Steve wants to say, _when you call me that, what does it mean to you? When you look at me, what do you see?_ He wants to say, _tell me exactly what you remember of us, every detail, every moment._

But he doesn't, because deep down, whatever Bucky remembers – it's enough.)

He cradles Bucky's head, cupping the back of his neck with his hand. 

Bucky yawns and says into Steve's shirt, “Liked the red velvet, by the way.” 

And a few moments later, he starts to snore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone give steve a hug. also comic book bucky is a potty mouth so this is canon. 
> 
> ps. thank u for all ur lovely comments. i love ya'll. update coming soon.


	4. In which “no, not without you” was a long time ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i'll update every day  
> real life: bitch u thought
> 
> this chapter is kinda inspired by a quote from one of my other tiny sons, jon snow: "I'm tired of fighting. It's all I've done since I left home."
> 
> enjoy!

**Four weeks ago**

Bucky surprises Steve by meeting him at the hangar when he lands the jet after a sixteen-hour flight. He’s dressed in white trousers and a vibrant shirt.

“You look like a dad on holiday,” Steve says, stumbling into his embrace. 

“And you look like a bag of shit,” Bucky replies, scratching his nails through the scruff on Steve's cheek.

“How come you're here?” Steve asks as they make their way up to the palace.

“T'Challa let me know you were coming, asked if we wanted to have dinner with them and I obviously said yes. _Hey!_ ” Bucky calls in Xhosa, “ _Look who I found!_ ” He motions to Steve, then claps hands with Okoye and a member of the kingsguard she is standing with in. Okoye nods to Steve, and he nods back. 

“Steve, Adebowale,” Bucky introduces and Steve holds out a hand for the young man to shake, which he does with surprising enthusiasm. “Bo likes Captain America,” Bucky says, wagging his eyebrows. Okoye laughs, which Steve hasn't heard her do before.

The poor kid looks mortified. He stutters a little. “You are a good fighter,” he says. “You protect people. I admire you.” 

“Thank you,” Steve says, touched and vaguely embarrassed.

“The king and the princess are inside,” Okoye says, taking pity on her companion, stepping aside so they can go through to the door the two are guarding. 

“Bo told me he likes you ‘cause you're pretty,” Bucky tells Steve in a low voice. The door closes on the sound of Okoye laughing again as Adebowale groans.

“We ordered pizza!” Shuri crows as soon as she sees them, gesturing expansively to the pile of boxes on the table. 

“Pizza?” Steve asks, bewildered. “From where?” 

“Kenya!”

“They ordered from Italy for T’Challa’s birthday,” Bucky mutters.

“Being king has its benefits,” T’Challa says, sharing Shuri’s grin and bumping his fist against hers. 

“We got cheese ones, for your American sensibilities.”

“Princess,” Bucky says with deadpan severity. “After seventy years of eating out a dog bowl off the floor, I ain't got no sensibilities left.” 

Steve feels the blood very suddenly drain out his face.

Bucky notices and elbows him. “Steve, lighten up. There was no dog bowl.” He winks at Shuri. “It was through a tube.” 

 

When the pizza is gone and they're eating malva pudding, which is possibly the best thing Steve has ever tasted, Shuri turns to Bucky with a serious expression and asks, “I’ve been meaning to ask. What kind of name is Bucky anyway?” 

“Shuri!” T’Challa chides as Bucky and Steve crack up laughing. “Bast take your bad manners!”

“What!” She asks, her teenage voice high and incredulous, “I'm just asking, brother!” 

“It's a nickname. They were big on that sorta thing back in the twenties. My parents called me James.”

“How do you get Bucky from James?” 

“James Buchanan,” Bucky says, with the same kind of pained smile he used to give when people asked for his name back when he was a child. Hearing him say his full name makes something curl warmly in Steve's chest. He can almost hear the elderly lady who lived two apartments down from the Barneses hollering that name when Bucky tramped up the stairs, usually with a bloody-nosed Steve in tow. “He was a US President.” 

“Are a lot of people named after him in America?” Shuri asks. 

“No,” Steve and Bucky say in unison. 

Shuri turns her enquiring gaze to Steve. “What about Steve? A lot of Steves?” 

“Yes,” they say together again. Bucky smirks. “Only one Rogers though.” 

For some reason, this makes Steve choke on his pudding, which sends Shuri into peals of snorting laughter. T’Challa is looking at him in a way that is far too knowing for Steve's comfort. 

 

Steve stays a while this time, almost a month, the longest he’s ever been in Wakanda. His team are stretched thin – sick of living on the quinjet, getting on each other’s nerves and getting sloppy with their cover. They’d agreed to part ways and lay low for exactly twenty-seven days, and then by day thirty, they would be back together. Wanda had made her own way to Scotland, wouldn’t say why but they all had their suspicions. Steve had dropped Natasha a mile out from Clint’s farm, then Sam in Hawaii, where his mother was enjoying a holiday, entirely by coincidence, if anyone asked.

Bucky has another check-in session with Shuri whilst Steve is there. It’s the same routine as last time, but not. There’s still mango juice, there’s still breathing in for seven and out for eleven. Bucky and Shuri are sat facing each other on the grass instead of standing a few feet apart. T’Challa wears his suit, but this time, the helm remains off. Instead of his chest feeling like he’s still got shot lungs and a ticker that might give out at any second, Steve is calm. Bucky seems to let the trigger words just wash over him, looking bored. 

When they’re done, Bucky holds out his hand and Steve hoists him to his feet. 

“Let’s go get iced tea and banana cake,” Bucky says.

He slips his hand into the back pocket of Steve’s cargo shorts – so how could Steve say no? 

 

He is still jolted awake every now and then by Bucky’s strangled cries. But just like the first nightmare, Bucky is awake by the time Steve sits up to check on him. He just watches over him, listening to Bucky's long, controlled breaths, making sure he stays awake until Bucky falls back to sleep, just in case. 

One night, Steve wakes up thirsty and goes to take a drink from the water jug. When he turns back from the fridge, he stops dead. 

Bucky is sat up, and there are tears streaming silently down his face. 

Steve immediately sits down on the edge of the bed. Bucky sniffs, wiping his eyes. But the moment Steve opens his arms, Bucky falls into them and starts to sob.

The next morning, Issa bustles into the _banda_ , chaperoned by his older brother Keanjaho, white and yellow paint flaking off their faces. Their hands are overflowing with dates they saved for Bucky from a party in the village last night, which they pour into a bowl. Issa kisses him on the cheek before leaving. After they are gone, Bucky sits down on the bed and covers his face with his hand. He is very still and very quiet for a long time.

Steve doesn't ask. There are some horrors that are best left in the dark where they belong.

 

On day twenty-four, Bucky and Steve are sat on stools just inside the _banda_ , keeping out of the midday sun. Bucky asks, in a tone that sounds like he's been waiting to ask for a while, “When you gotta leave?” 

“A few days. Why, you sick of me?” 

“Nah.” 

“How long would you like me to stay for?” 

“Forever.” 

“Sure, okay,” Steve laughs. But Bucky doesn’t. “Really?” he asks. “Wait. Buck. _Really_?” 

Bucky narrows his eyes. 

“Yeah, dipshit,” he says, voice sharp. “ _Really_. I know farming and chopping wood and hanging out with kids isn't exactly Hollywood movie stuff but it's a good life, you know? And you have seen this place, haven’t you?” Bucky stands and opens drapes of his door, pointing to what lies beyond it, the lush green jungle and the sparkling city and a people with charity and kindness in their hearts. “It's like paradise. I’ll stay here til the day I die if they'll have me.” 

It's that – Bucky talking about dying – that shifts the mood. Steve winces. 

Something goes hard in Bucky's eyes and he lets the drape fall back. “But I know you won't.” 

“How do you know that?” Steve asks, standing up too and raising his chin. 

It's a reflex. Before the serum, Steve used to raise his chin when he was squaring up for a fight, to make himself look taller. And from the way Bucky's hand curls into a fist, it clearly doesn't take any effort on his part to remember that. 

“Not your style. Too many people need saving. I couldn't ask you to just sit on your ass in a hut with me, could I?” 

“You haven't asked though, Bucky. You've just assumed.” 

“True though.” Bucky sits down on his stool and looks away, rubbing the hem of his shuka cloth between his fingers. “I'm tired, Steve. I've been fighting different fights for different sides for as long as I can remember. Ever since DC, I've just wanted some peace.” 

Steve thinks anger isn't really what he's feeling right now, but whatever he does feel hurts, so anger is what comes out. “If I hadn't come to get you in Bucharest, you would have been gunned down in your apartment. Very peaceful, jackass. Great plan.” 

Bucky’s gaze knifes up and across the space between them, and he's obviously deeply insulted. “Well, shit. Congratulations, Cap. Guess that makes you my big fucking hero just like you wanted -” 

“Oh, _fuck_ you –” 

“Maybe you were too busy trying to make sure the Winter Soldier didn’t rip anyone's face off–”

“Don’t fucking do that –”

“Tell me I’m wrong, Rogers, go on –”

“You _asshole_ , that’s not fair –” 

(They used to fight like this. Steve tries to keep his memories sweet, like a honeymoon, but this is very familiar too. When Steve would get into one too many punch-ups he couldn’t win, when Bucky would overspend on smokes or booze – or, if they really got into it, girls. Later, when Steve kept trying to enlist and when Bucky would get so mad he’d rip the faked papers right out his hands. Steve met most of his battles with a swift right hook but when it came to Bucky, it was always like this. Words and words and words, sharp like barbs. _In each other’s pockets like brothers_ , people would say, but no matter what happened, Bucky and Steve would keep the _like lovers_ locked way down deep, clutched close between them, tended to like a tiny flame, even when they were yelling at each other. 

They used to fight like this – because how could they have known they didn’t have all the time in the world to make it up? How could they have known that every moment they spent pissed and stubborn as hell at each other was leading them closer to a train speeding through the Alps, with Steve stretching out his hand into nothing and Bucky’s scream whipped away by the wind?) 

“I had a whole escape route planned out for when people came knocking –”

“Jesus fucking wept, Buck –” 

“And it sure as shit didn't include you and your buddies leading them to my goddamn door.”

They glare at each other for a seething, wounded moment. (How could they have known?)

Bucky turns away morosely. Steve scrubs a hand over his face. As quick as it had heated up, the atmosphere cools like a gentle breeze. 

“I don't wanna argue with you,” Bucky says quietly. For the first time since Steve has visited him in Wakanda, he seems deflated, hollowed out. Steve feels sick at the idea he's caused this. “Stay if you want. Go if you want.” 

Steve sits back down and puts his hands on Bucky's knees. “There's people I have to look out for. Things still left to do. But, Buck –” The beads round Steve's wrist trill and he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Shit. T’Challa wanted to talk about sorting Wanda out. Her and Vision keep going off the grid together and someone is gonna blow a gasket. He said he'd ring to tell me when there was a good time.” 

Bucky won’t look at him. “Now's as good a time as any.” 

Steve squeezes Bucky's knees. “Bucky –” 

“He’s a busy guy, don’t keep him waiting.”

“I'll come back later.” 

“Steve. Please go.” 

Steve stands and leaves. 

 

The next day, Steve comes back just after sunrise. Bucky is sat cooking breakfast outside his _banda_ , chatting with one of the women from the village. 

“ _Morning, Ramila,_ ” Steve says in Xhosa. 

“ _Morning, Steve,_ ” she says and smiles. 

Bucky looks up at him, squinting in the sun. For a moment, Steve thinks Bucky is going to tell him to leave again. “Hey,” he says instead, “come sit.” 

Steve sits beside Bucky. Ramila is eyeing them like she knows they've had a fight. Maybe Bucky told her, but she doesn't seem angry with Steve, even though the villagers have a major soft spot for Bucky. She just gets up and brushes off her skirts. “ _Enjoy your breakfast,_ ” she says. 

“You can – ” Steve begins in English then switches, “ _stay_.” 

“It's okay,” she says in English. She almost sounds American when she says it, because she's learnt it from Bucky. “See you later.” 

“ _Thanks, Ramila,_ ” Bucky says. Once she's gone, they sit in silence. Bucky stirs the brown porridge with a little more attention than it probably requires. “Hungry?” He asks after what Steve considers an excruciating few minutes. 

“Yes,” Steve says. 

“Go get the bowls, would you? I gotta watch this or it'll burn.”

Steve goes. When he comes back, Bucky takes the pot off the fire and sets it on the cool ground. Steve holds a bowl in each hand and Bucky ladles porridge into them.

When Steve polishes off his bowl in a few mouthfuls, partly out of hunger and partly out of anxiety, Bucky moves the pot closer to him. Steve takes a few spoonfuls. This is as long as he can stand the silence for. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes.

“Mm?” Bucky hums, eating from the pot.

“About yesterday. I'm sorry.”

Bucky is frowning slightly, scraping the bottom of the pot. “Don’t get all bent out of shape, Steve. It's no big deal.”

“I was a shit. An absolute shit.”

“Yeah, you were, but you’ve always been at least a bit of a shit on any given day,” Bucky says, and he winks at him. “That’s why I kept you around.” 

He offers Steve the last spoonful of porridge off his spoon, and Steve eats it. Bucky reaches up and moves some of Steve's hair out of his face. 

“I’m sorry too,” Bucky murmurs. “But I meant what I said about you staying even if I shouldn’t have said it. I want you here. I want you all to myself. It’s not fair though. If I made you pick, if I knew I was keeping you from fighting the good fight...” His smile is so gentle. “It's all you've ever done, honey. Since I've known you, since you were five years old. I couldn't live with myself.” 

Steve leans forward on impulse and presses his lips to Bucky's temple. When he draws back, Bucky's eyes are closed. “Your mom always used to do that,” he breathes softly. “By the time I was sixteen she had to go up on tiptoes.” 

“But she always had to duck down for me,” Steve says. 

Bucky opens his eyes. “My little no-quitter, she called you.” 

“That’s right,” Steve says.

For a moment, it's like between them they've breathed life into the memory of Sarah Rogers, the only two people in the world who remember that she ever lived at all. Once, this would have caused a terrible ache in Steve, a yearning that reached back impossibly over the years, a hurt that would never stop hurting – because how could anything ever replace her? 

(He remembers going to the Smithsonian exhibit and seeing the brief mention of ‘Steve Rogers was born to Sarah Rogers in 1918’, then the whole wing that began ‘When Captain America was created, Abraham Erskine set the world on a path to the heroes we know today’ – and thinking it was wrong. It was wrong that his mother only got one line, when really, it was her who created Captain America, in all the ways that mattered. Steve would think, _the serum didn't give me half this stuff, it was my ma._ He knew the details were up for grabs but he couldn't stop himself hating how they diced them up anyway – his life, shuffled into neat little piles that told a good story, boxed up and shipped out to whoever wanted to read it next. 

_There was a kid called Bucky Barnes_ , he’d thought the first time he read the words ‘A Fallen Comrade’. _Do you remember him? Not just Captain America's old buddy, not just the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country. He was my night and day, he was every breath in my lungs, he was the way the world spun around me and the way it stopped after he was gone, he was, he was, he was –_ )

Bucky takes his hand, and it’s still a little warm and sweaty from cooking over the fire. He isn't a picture in a museum, he isn't made of memories – he’s real and he's right before Steve's eyes. 

Once, Steve would have ached for everything that had been reduced to memories and dust. But now the ache doesn't come. 

“I have to go in two days to touch base with everyone.”

“Okay.” 

“I wish we had more time.” 

“Me too.”

“But ‘til then, I'm right here.” 

“That's all I want,” Bucky whispers. Then his smile breaks open. “Well, that, and for you to do the dishes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao ya'll know what happens in the next chapter. i wish i was sorry.


	5. In which it is the end of the world (and the line).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhh, two chapters in one night?? whaaaat.  
> this is both the happiest and saddest thing i've ever wrote. there's the briefest mention of underage, like teeny tiny.  
> ya'll, you know whats about to go down. prepare ur bodies. infinity war spoilers if you haven't guessed.

**A few hours ago**

Steve is fitting his new shield.

(And isn’t that just a can of worms he doesn’t have time to open).

After two of the Dora Milaje had presented Steve with the shield and hurried off to be with their king, Bucky had poked his head in. Looking both awe-struck and terrified, he’d said, “The city forcefield just blew up a spaceship, did you see?”

Now he’s watching Steve, leaning against the doorway. The fingertips of his left hand _clink_ as he drums them absentmindedly against the gun slung low at his side. “You’re spoiling me, honey. Back so soon.”

“What can I say?” Steve says, testing the weight of the shield, “I’m like a bad penny.”

“It’s a fine mess you’ve dragged me into this time.” Bucky doesn't look particularly enthused when he says this.

“Technically, T’Challa dragged you into this one.”

“Yeah, alright,” Bucky shrugs. “I figure I owe him a few.”

Steve eyes the sleek, black vibranium shimmering with Bucky's movements. “Nice arm, by the way.”

This makes Bucky crack a bit of smile. “Thanks. Big fan of the beard. Very hot.”

Steve feels the back of his neck and the pit of his stomach grow warm.

“I swear, it's taken you all one hundred years to grow the damn thing.”

“Really?” Steve touches the hair on his cheek. “A hundred years and I've never...? That doesn't sound right.”

“Maybe a hundred is pushing it. But we only knew each other for, what, thirty of those.” Bucky’s eyes flash playfully. “We were seeing other people for the other seventy.”

Steve decided a while back that if Bucky can joke, he can too. “ _I_ wasn't. You were seeing other people?”

“Well. There were these Russian fellas for a while...”

“Oh? How'd that work out?”

Bucky grimaces exaggeratedly. “Not good. Weird guys. Possessive.”

With every quip Bucky makes about his time with HYDRA, Steve’s heart feels a little lighter. Like it truly has become a faraway past that can no longer taint him. It makes everything feel more real, somehow, impossibly, when there are aliens to fight. Bucky is _here_ , whole and hale, is grinning, and pushing his long, soft-looking hair away from his face, even on the cusp of battle.

“Hey,” he says, pushing off the wall, nearing Steve, who is running the pad of his thumb over the shield's sharp edge. “You remember when we were, like, fifteen, and you were over at mine and my pa was teaching me how to shave? He asked you if you wanted a turn and you looked at him with those big baby blues and said –” Bucky adopts a high-pitched version of the drawl kids of Brooklyn today have lost to time. “ _Gosh, Mister Barnes_ –”

“I did not say _gosh_ –”

“Maybe it was _golly_ –”

“Oh, I bet.”

“ _Gee whizz willikers Mister Barnes_ –”

“Jesus –” Steve laughs and pretends as if he’s going to smack Bucky with the shield.

“Okay, okay,” Bucky continues, chuckling, “Well, you said there was nothing there worth a shave. And you looked so sad like you weren't lucky you hadn't died of some shit that spring. And I said –”

“ _Take his eyebrows, dad,_ ” Steve finishes.

Bucky blinks. “Oh. I thought I said pubes.”

Steve snorts and nudges Bucky with his elbow. “You think you would have survived saying _pubes_ in front of your ma?”

Bucky shakes his head, hair swaying. He's got the look on his face he has when he's trying hard to remember something he deems very important. “Why does that memory make me think of your dick then?”

Steve's whole body feels like it goes up in flames.

“Uh,” he coughs, “Well. That night was the first time we… Becca was at a friend's and your parents took Georgie and Lil to the movies, so we...uh. Y’know. Fooled around.”

Bucky's eyes go downcast and his mouth does his little half-smile, except it looks a little sad. His sigh sounds sad too. Steve doesn't understand. “The first of many nights, if memory serves. Which it mostly does these days.”

Suddenly, the air in the little weapons bay seems to vanish.

Steve realises there have been so many opportunities in the past two years when he should have done this, should have been brave. This is not the right time by a landslide, and now it might be the only one they get.

He swallows, throat tight. “You… you do remember some of that stuff, then?”

Bucky’s smile disappears. “Some of _that stuff_? I remember damn near all of _that stuff_.”

“Oh. Right,” Steve says quickly, “I just wasn't sure –”

Bucky's left hand latches onto Steve’s free wrist and the metal is warm, like skin. “Steve... What are you talking about? I’ve been obvious this whole time.”

“You have?”

Bucky's brow wrinkles. “I told you I loved you, shit-for-brains.”

“I thought you meant.... like friends.”

Even to Steve, that now sounds absurd.

Bucky’s eyebrows fly up. “Like...? _Wait_ , were you just– being _polite_ this entire time...?”

“I didn't know exactly what you remembered. And I didn't want to feel pressured,” Steve continues frantically when Bucky laughs like he’s admitting defeat. “Or if you remembered but didn't want –”

“ _I didn't want_? Is that a joke? Steve, I thought we _were_ back together.”

Steve’s mind goes blank. “You… you did?”

Bucky nods very slowly, looking at Steve like he's grown a second head. “I thought we'd just picked up where we left off? Everyone here who knows us thinks that. I’ve…” Bucky's face turns pale. “Oh my god. I've been calling you my boyfriend.”

“You have?” Steve repeats dumbly. “But we never –” He stops.

Bucky’s eyebrows climb impossibly higher. “What? Fucked like we were horny teenagers again?”

“Yeah. I mean. No. We never even kissed. Why didn't you...?” But he trails off again, because Bucky is shuffling and fiddling with his gun. “Bucky, what is it?”

“Well, I just figured...”

Steve’s heart is hammering. “Just figured what?”

“You weren't interested anymore. In sex stuff. With me. What with the arm gone and everything. Which… I was fine with it, really.”

Steve gapes.

(He thinks of Bucky with strands falling out of his bun and how much he wanted to tangle his hand in all that hair. He thinks of Bucky naked and wet from the river and how it made his mouth go dry. He thinks of the sight of Bucky throwing his head back and laughing, the sound of his little whiffling breaths as he slept, the way Bucky gave him a little squeeze when they hugged just like he used to in the old days).

All he can say is, “You're kidding me, right?”

Bucky makes a _pshaw_ noise and jabs Steve with a metal finger. “You're one to talk, Rogers. Thinking I was too much of a delicate flower for you to make a move on.” He scowls. “I dunno. I was just glad to have you at all. I guess I just figured I’m not the same guy as back then by half, am I?”

At this, Steve merely leans forward and scratches his beard against the stubble on Bucky’s cheek. “I’m not that little guy from Brooklyn anymore either. Still interested?”

“Duh,” Bucky says, fingers toying with the hair on Steve’s chin.

Steve puffs out a laugh and hangs his head. “We're so stupid.”

Bucky scoffs, “Yeah, no kidding.” He gives his gun a once over and goes to the door. “Come on. If you aren’t gonna kiss me now, we might as well go before this Thanos dick catches us all with our shorts down like Sister Agatha in the confession box at Sunday school.”

“We never did that.”

“Nah, but I always kinda wanted to,” Bucky says, and he turns and gives Steve a blazing look.

Steve does the only sensible thing – he goes to him and he plants one soft and true on Bucky’s lips.

He rests his forehead against Bucky's. “You're the love of my life.”

Bucky's mouth purses like he's trying not to smile wide. “Well. That’s worked out alright, 'cause you're the love of my life too.”

Someone bangs on the door. “Guys, quit making out in there! We got plans we can’t reschedule!”

“We’re not making out, Wilson!” Bucky yells back and kisses Steve.

There's nothing soft about this one. Steve buries his free hand in Bucky's hair just like he's been yearning to, and he grabs his ass with the other, using the shield to yank their bodies flush together. Bucky’s gun clanks to the floor when he takes Steve's face in his hands.

“Barnes, you fucking liar!” Sam calls. “I can hear you!”

Steve presses kisses to Bucky’s jawline and down his throat. “You wanna fuck right now?” he asks, grinning.

Bucky’s breathless laugh rumbles against Steve’s lips. “God, honey,” he moans, “Like you wouldn’t believe.” His metal fingers scrape gloriously against Steve’s skull as he drags Steve’s mouth back to his.

Steve is almost tempted to take it that far. He would rather be pulled apart by wild horses (or by whatever Thanos is sending to rain down hell upon them) than leave Bucky right now. He wants to savour the hot slide of Bucky's tongue in his mouth, the way Bucky's body feels strong and solid against his, the little noises he's making that are exactly, _exactly_ the same as when they were young and the war wasn't even a thought in their minds, when they'd make sure the people in the tenements around them were asleep and Bucky used to whisper _c’mere honey_ as he pulled Steve on top of him, and Steve would suck hickeys onto the inside of Bucky's knees or high up on his thighs, because it drove him crazy and they were the only places where no one else would see.

It occurs to Steve that until now, they’ve never kissed when they are the same height. He can’t quite that believe that before this, their last kiss was probably the morning Bucky shipped out. A soft press of Bucky’s lips to the corner of his mouth when Steve sat up in bed to say goodbye. But that’s about right. (It’s a great joke – during the war they had fought side-by-side, but had never been further apart, and if HYDRA hadn't found Bucky half-dead in the snow, Steve would never have seen him again).

They are both so _stupid, stupid, stupid_.

It's Bucky who finds the presence of mind to pull away. “We should go,” he whispers.

“I love you," Steve whispers back, "More than anything.”

Bucky swipes the thumb of his flesh hand across Steve's bottom lip. “I love you too. I always have.”

Steve takes Bucky's hand and kisses his palm. “Ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

Bucky picks up his gun, slings it over his shoulder. There’s a flicker in his eyes almost like the shadow of the Soldier for a moment, and then it's gone, and he makes a face.

“Don't jinx it, jackass.”

 

 

**Now**

 

 

 

  


“Steve?”

  


 

 

 

**Now**

His face is throbbing from where Thanos had rung his head like a bell.

He can only manage one clear thought.

And it's this:

All those times he was on recon missions, or peace talks, or making sure the team that had given up their lives for him were safe and well and something approaching happy, he'd always secretly longed for Wakanda.

For the times they'd explored the city or weaved through the market stalls. Or when Bucky had to chase his wayward goats away from the jungle’s edge and Steve sat and laughed with the girls who were helping him improve his Xhosa.

For when the Border warriors or Jabari invited Steve to spar with them to test his mettle, and Bucky had heckled him from the side lines every time M’Baku put him on his back (and one time, when Steve had managed to knock M’Baku to the dirt, he’d burst into a disarmingly passionate rendition of _Star-Spangled Man With A Plan_ ).

He'd longed for when he and Bucky would sit by the lake at sunrise and listen to the birds begin to sing. Or when they'd lean up against the sun-warmed side of Bucky's _banda_ watching the stars come out.

And above all this, he'd longed for when the fire smouldered down to embers, and they'd retreat inside. Bucky would lie on his bed and Steve would lie on the floor and before they slept, Bucky would reach down into the space between them and link his fingers with Steve's, sometimes not even saying a word.

He'd longed for his best friend and their happiness – his and Bucky's, _together_.

When he was in Wakanda, the world was theirs. And it was quiet.

That was what he'd longed for, he thinks, as he turns away from the grim look on Thor's face (Thor, whom Steve cared for deeply, who had appeared like a miracle, and who could only do as the rest of them did and watch). He tries to take a few numb steps.

The sounds of the battle have died down to almost nothing. The screaming has stopped. Okoye is using her spear to stand, a hand pressed to her mouth to hush the way she’s sobbing. Wanda is gone. Rhodey has stopped calling out for Sam.

His knees buckle.

The world is quiet now, and he'd give anything to take it all back.

He reaches out a hand to the ground.

The ashes that were once Bucky Barnes slip between his fingers and mingle with the dirt.

  


 

_―_

 

 “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

 _―_ Madeline Miller _, The Song of Achilles._

 

_―_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> infinity war took my job, my wife and my kids. 
> 
>  
> 
> thanks for reading and i love u all. i'm [baedotburr](http://baedotburr.tumblr.com) on tumblr. please come cry with me until our faves get out the soul stone.


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